Juno

Juno (2007)

Neptune Theater, Seattle, WA

January 06, 2008

**** / ****

by Scott Muoio

Juno is one of the most real, insightful, and clever movies I have seen in some time. Even though it features a smorgasbord of off-kilter, hipster lingo, it nonetheless creates a bevy of characters so true I swear I have seen them in my own life. The film is also very funny, with humour that depends not on being in the know, but on being merely human. And more than anything, by showing life in many stages the way it is and not the way movies generally pretend it might be Juno proves extremely honest, even through some of the dodgy dialogue moments. Simply put, Juno is one of the best movies of 2007.

The film begins with teenage alterna-gal Juno’s (Ellen Page) first sexual encounter with a shy, reluctant, introverted type, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), which launches the film’s main predicament, Juno’s pregnancy. From there, the movie follows the highs, lows, and strange circumstances Juno encounters at school, at home, and amongst the film’s many wonderful characters during her nine-month pregnancy. Breaking up the many stages of her incubation into seasonal blocks (a clever idea punctuated by Paulie and his track team’s initial run through the opening shot of each section) the movie focuses on Juno’s decision to avoid abortion and subsequent arrangement to give the baby up for adoption to a “perfect couple,” The Lorings. Along the way we meet a cast of characters that delight us with their warmth, humour, and humility, always ringing true in their many flawed personas.

We meet Juno’s father, Mac (J.K. Simmons), who loves his daughter, wishes the best for her, and understands life’s lessons are often learned by actually living them. Bren (Allison Janey) is Mac’s second wife, Juno’s stepmother, yet is a real mom in that perfectly awkward and loving way only a stepparent can be. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) is the hopeful adopting mother to Juno’s unborn baby, and finds herself worried that another potential adoption will go awry. Vanessa is infertile, driven, and more than anything wishes to be mom, the role she hopes she was born to play. Mark Loring (Jason Bateman), Vanessa’s husband, is living a similarly yuppie-lifestyle in their perfect, cookie cutter home, with one major difference: the role Mark dreams he was born to play is that of a rock star. Instead of touring with Sonic Youth, however, Mark currently finds himself penning jingles for radio and television commercials and at the mercy of his baby obsessed wife. Juno, with her combination of spunk and forthright intelligence, eventually proves the perfect middle ground for each as she signs on for the role as their birth mother.

The film also features minor characters that fit ideally into the story bringing it even further to life. Leah (Olivia Thirlby) is Juno’s cheerleader best friend who has a crush on the chubby, dorky, math teacher and provides the essential regular girl gal pal confidant and teenager common sense even the wisest of adolescents need. The requisite high school jock (Daniel Clark), makes a few short yet crucial appearances reminding us that while he has the hots for alterna-gal Juno, he chooses to show it not through kindness or loving advances, but by calling her an ugly loser. This is life and by exploring its many facets (divorce, relationships, parenting, pregnancy, growing up, to name a few) director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody create a familiar world whose characters, situations, and reactions to life’s ever changing pitch ring true. The characters and their reactions also make us ponder our own situations, past, present, and future, drawing emotional responses not through clever manipulation but honest realism. Rather than reveal it here and spoil a great moment, suffice to write Juno’s father’s reaction to initially hearing that his teenage daughter is pregnant proves precisely why this film has received rave reviews: it’s brilliant. It also proves once more that in Juno, we have a film that teens, young adults, parents, and older people can enjoy together without the taint of rotten language, gratuitous sex, or horrific violence, and the film deserves all the praise it has already received.

All this and I still haven’t touched on Juno, herself. Ellen Page plays the wise cracking, wise beyond her years Juno with a combination of sweet, fragile innocence and happy-go-lucky self-confidence. Not since Natalie Portman’s performance in Beautiful Girls, as the similarly wise beyond her years teen, has a teenager been this mesmerizing. Though the script gives Page a lot of challenges with its beyond reasonable hipster talk, Page nevertheless pulls off the spunky dialogue as naturally as saying, “Hey, how ya doin’?” The cool guy high school hind sight persona screenwriter Cody creates for Page seems to be how she wishes she was back in the day, with Iggy and the Stooges as Juno’s favorite band, her hamburger phone (and having Juno reference it!), and her talk of obscure horror film directors, but the otherwise wonderful and realistically flawed traits of Juno and the rest of the characters populating her world make this aspect merely a minor annoyance. Page trudges through the sharp yet mucky dialogue proving she is one of the best young actresses currently on the scene.

Rather than spoil the movie with too many more details, I will instead elaborate on one particular shot in the film that spoke to me in a way few others ever have. After we learn earlier in the film that Bren, Juno’s step-mom, is obsessed with dogs, cuts out their photos in magazines, makes quilts of their likeness, and pines for their furry touch, we find her rudely confronted by her defensive stepdaughter. “You don’t even have a dog,” Juno fires at Bren. Bren replies, “That’s because you’re allergic to their saliva, Juno, but after you leave I’m getting two weimaraners.” Juno’s sarcastic retort, “Woah, dream big!” This scene made me hate Juno even as I realized this was just a bratty kid being a bratty know-it-all. However, when in the finale we discover that Bren gets her weimaraners and loves them dearly, I admit, I was struck with near-tearful emotion. It isn’t often that when parents sacrifice for their children, and in this case stepchildren, that the dreams they put on hold, no matter how big or small, are ever realized. To see a selfless stepmom such as Bren achieve her dream, I admit, it got me and definitely struck a nerve as subtle movie-making genius.

In realizing small details such as Bren’s eventual success amongst the otherwise hurricane like storm of the intertwined lives in Juno, I knew without a doubt that Juno is a special film. Now go see this movie, yourself, if you haven’t yet. I don’t think you will be disappointed.